1. Technical Field
One or more embodiments relate generally to systems and methods for providing electronic communication systems. More specifically, one or more embodiments relate to systems and methods of providing messaging systems that incorporate various forms of electronic communication between users.
2. Background and Relevant Art
Due to advances in electronic communication, the majority of people use various forms of electronic communication to communicate with other people. In addition, mobile devices (e.g., smart phones, tablets) have become increasingly popular, and allow people to send and receive electronic communications from almost anywhere. The popularity of electronic communication, in combination with the increase in mobile device usage, has lead to additional uses of the electronic communication technology.
For example, one such additional use of electronic communication technology includes payment applications that provide users the ability to send and receive electronic payments to one another. In theory, the concept of using a payment application on a mobile device to electronically transfer money provides a convenient method of transferring money between users. Conventional payment applications, however, have several drawbacks that often cause frustration, confusion, and result in a payment process that is often more time consuming than it is worth.
Many conventional payment applications require the use of card readers that connect to another computing device, such as a mobile device. The conventional payment applications that use a card reader have several disadvantages. For example, a user must carry and always have the card reader, in addition to the mobile device, in order to receive a payment. In addition, the card reader and the connection between the mobile device and card reader are often prone to failure. Card readers also lack public trust due to the ability of criminals to use card readers to steal sensitive credit card information. Furthermore, payment applications that require card readers are typically not suitable for processing remote payments.
Other conventional payment applications do not use card readers, but are standalone payment services in which both the sender and the recipient of the payment must create an account specifically for the payment service. Due to the fact that conventional payment applications have no other use outside of sending and receiving payments, it is often the case that two people are not needing to transfer a payment do not have an account for the same payment service. Thus, with many conventional payment applications, the sender, recipient, or both have to go through a time-consuming process of setting up an account, causing the payment process to be inconvenient and burdensome.
In addition to simply setting up an account associated with a particular payment application, the payment process that many conventional payment applications use is burdensome and complicated. For example, many conventional payment applications process a payment by sending a series of emails with links. Users must click on the email links to continue the payment process, such as accepting or denying a payment. Therefore, the payment processing steps are not intuitive and often cause user confusion. In addition, the processing steps are time-consuming and cause user frustration during the payment process.
Accordingly, there are a number of disadvantages with conventional systems and methods of sending payments between users.